Factors explaining inter-municipal cooperation in service delivery: a meta-regression analysis

Inter-municipal cooperation is an important public service delivery reform, whose drivers move beyond simple concerns with costs and economic efficiency, to policy issues related to governance structure and spatial context. We conduct a meta-regression analysis based on the existing multivariate empirical literature to explore what factors explain divergence in results in the existing empirical studies. We find strong evidence that fiscal constraints, spatial, and organizational factors are significant drivers of cooperation. Our meta-regressions do not yield results to explain divergence in results on community wealth, economies of scale, or racial homogeneity. More studies on these factors are needed to understand how these factors might affect cooperation. Future theoretical and empirical research should give more attention to spatial and organizational factors to develop a better understanding of factors driving cooperation, and how they differ across local government structures and regions.